music
April-June Homeschool Miscellany
April started with 19yo and 17yo’s first concert. 17yo had found out about a Stardew Valley concert and as she loves the game she asked if we could go. 19yo was interested in coming along for the ride but 15yo refused. However the system wouldn’t let me buy three tickets and forced the purchase of four, so 17yo invited one of her besties (who has not played Stardew Valley and knows nothing about it) along. Bestie came along because she likes classical instruments and is in a school ensemble (I call them baby orchestras).
November-December Homeschool Miscellany
As is normal for us, November kind of slowly ground to a halt as there was a rather large thing to take care of and then we focused hard on/got roped into helping with end of year stuff, and December was pretty much a write-off.
15yo worked through a Netflix documentary series about F1 racing as her boyfriend is really into it so she was trying to learn a little more about it. I watched a couple of episodes with her and she told me a bit about the boyfriend’s favourite team and favourite driver and a few of the other drivers, saying that now she at least knew who he was talking about when he was excitedly babbling about them like they were friends she should know. We also marvelled at the pit crews basically disassembling and reassembling a car in seconds.
April Homeschool Miscellany
April was a bit of a blur of late nights and continued chaos. When the budget cycle rolled around we did manage a zoo trip. 16yo refused to wake up, and 14yo, 12yo and 14yo’s SO and I were literally just about to walk out of the house when the outlaws arrived with my 4yo nephew. We told them we were just heading out to the zoo and they were welcome to come along if they wanted, so we all ended up piling back into their car and heading on over.
Massive Christmas Island Photopost 2014-15
Minimal text, many photos, some videos. Mishmash of scenic, happysnaps and homeschooling stuff coz that’s how we roll. Grab a drink and a snack before commencing.
First couple of weeks…
The airport wait wasn’t terribly exciting but at least there were planes to watch being loaded, taking off and landing.
Unexpected family history and a keyboard
Recently we were at a nephew’s 3rd birthday party. Seeing as we were in the area we followed JJ’s parents back to their place as his dad had said he had a straight razor belonging to his grandfather that JJ might be interested in (seeing as he’s recently gotten into shaving with straight razors).
JJ showing 9yo how to examine razor’s edges. Or something.
!schooling 0000E25c - F02n | 6-10 May
This weekly stuff is tiring. Seriously who reads this anyway? May just start hiding them as I still kind of need to write them. Anyway.
Bit of a slow week this week as the kids all caught a cold and I spent a couple of days heroically fending it off.
The kids wanted me to teach them how to draw. Actually what they really wanted was for me to magically confer kickass drawing skills onto them. I told them they would need to practise a lot as most of drawing was getting your eyes, brain and hand to cooperate and the remainder was your imagination. I put out a few items on the table including a Duplo block which I deliberately angled towards them. They don’t like drawing things on angles, everything has to be STRAIGHT. Even 8yo who currently has slightly better spatial perception drew it straight, even though he drew all three corners that he could see (in a straight line rather than having the middle one come down slightly as it did in perspective). Almost forgot about maths bookwork. 8yo is at a stage in Dragonbox where it’s stopped pretending it’s a game and has presented him with actual maths, with cute graphics like it’s marker on nicely textured paper. 6yo is struggling with Dragonbox so opted for her book and is progressing extremely slowly with it (getting bored easily and I think it’s s getting a bit hard for her).
Music session with Child's Play Music (and other things homeschooly)
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
The most recent session at Natural Learning Co-op (formerly known as Learning Hub, apparently there’s another group in the northern suburbs also called Learning Hub, and which I’ll probably shortern to the last word as I’m lazy like that) involved a music session with Alec from Child’s Play Music. He had a huge van full of musical instruments that he’d constructed mostly from recycled materials.